'Prentice-Hancock

Not Him

No, not Commander Salamar from classic Tom Baker serial The Planet of Evil. I'm talking about last nights telly, in particular The Apprentice (BBC1) and Hancock and Joan (BBC4)

The Apprentice kicked off in brilliant style with some wonderfully ridiculous hyperbole from the candidates. One of my favourites so far is Raef who claims that "the spoken word is my tool." and that he can "get on with both Prince and Pauper".

There was a serious class divide last night, between cunty barrister Nicholas De-Lacy Brown and Alex. Both of them were total twunts, but that's the appeal of The Apprentice innit? Nicholas was fired after a mix up with some lobsters and Raef lives to fight another day.

The guy I most want to win however, might just be Kevin. This is primarily because he looks a little bit like Matt Lucas dressed as Jamie Oliver. I hope he wins so that once S'r'Al gives him the job, he strips off his suit to reveal a hilarious fat suit complete with comedy tits and a comedy vagina, sits on Sir Al's knee and tells him to "Call me Bubbles..."

Out of the girls, noone is particularly standing out as a potential winner or anyone to root for. There is the best salesperson in Europe...[/hyperbole] Irish Jenny who whilst being quite sexy does have a slightly larger gap between her eyes than is surely healthy. She also claims on The Apprentice wesbsite that she can sell a sheet of paper for £50, dunno about you but at £50 I'd be expecting a little bit more than "paper" if you know what I mean.

Looking for (stationary) business darling?

Lucinda, the beret wearing, soft talking potential nutcase should give us some entertainment in the weeks to come. Sir Alan was on fine form in the Boardroom, and it's shaping up to be another cracking series.

BBC4 continued their Curse of Comedy season with Hancock and Joan starring the brilliant Ken Stott as Tony Hancock. Although he doesn't really look like Hancock, and although at certain points in the film his voice wavered a little and that Edinburgh accent of his slipped through, you could just about believe he was Hancock. Certainly in some of his mannerisms, and in certain bits of dialogue. Sadly, as a fan of Hancock and as a fan of Ken Stott I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the previous weeks Steptoe drama. Perhaps I struggled to believe Stott as Hancock primarily because I'd watched a lot of the two of them recently in DVDs of Rebus and Hancock's Half Hour. Still, it was a good drama, barring the odd ending and Stott was a much more believable Hancock than Alex Jennings was as Dads Army star and friend of Hancock; John LeMesurier, whose wife Hancock had an affair with. First of all, they look nothing like each other, and unlike Stott who adopted the mannerisms and for the most part the accent, Jennings just played LeMesurier as Prince Charles! I think his presence is what really detracted from the drama of the piece, you're really supposed to feel sorry for John, who acts like a complete gentleman whilst knowing his wife is sleeping with his best friend, but Jennings was too flat, and not three dimensional enough to illicit any kind of sympathy.
So there we go, last nights television poked, prodded and analysed by someone waiting for a Megabus. Doctor who returns at the earlier time of 6:20 on the 5th April so imagine this place to be Doctor who and Apprentice central for the next 13 weeks!

Happy times and places!

He's Back...and it's about time too

Auditions for David Tennant's replacement get underway

Yep, that's right, Alan Sugar is back! (You thought I was gonna talk Doctor Who series 4 didn't you? Well I will in a minute.) Brand new series of The Apprentice kicks off at 9 on Wednesday and I cannot wait! I think last year marked the first time I sat down and watched the whole series from the start, and boy howdy (Did I seriously just use the phrase boy howdy?) it was exciting, still can't believe Simon won, and no doubt he'll make an appearance this series, unless he ended up in a stationary cupboard rocking back and forth in his own piss soon after starting work for Sir Alan. So what to expect this series? Another Katie Hopkins? Another Rory? Altogether now: "I am Yorboss"

Oh alright, you twisted my arm, let's talk Who. Series 4 begins 5th April, the day after the Torchwood season finale and a no doubt memorable appearance on Jonathan Ross by David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

Keep back! Or she'll do 30 minutes of "Am I Bovvered?"

So what to expect this time round? I'm gonna go all out and say; pretty much the same as bloody always! Knockabout opening episode, historical episode, old enemy from the shows past, an "emotional" episode, a famous historical figure, one with very little Tennant "action" and another old enemy in the finale. Granted it's bloody worked wonders for the past 3 years but I think next year should give the production team breathing space to maybe figure out a new format for 2010's series 5. But that's ages away! There's still 13 episodes before the Doctor buggers off into the TARDIS and pops in to see us at regular intervals next year, so what's lined up?

Billie's Back!

But presumably she wont be getting up to any of this nonsense, this aint Torchwood y'know! Rose comes back in episode 11 for no doubt an epic finale which by the looks of things (and a cheeky little teaser trail) will feature Daleks! So if Rose, Captain Jack et al and the Daleks aren't a secret, then what is? Cough. Davros. Cough.

Something happens to "change" the Doctor

Stephen Greenhorn has said his episode (That's episode 6 fact fans) involves something that's going to change the Doctor. Exactly what that is we're not exactly sure, but rumours abound that it involves this woman claiming to be the Doctor's daughter! The cheek! Hang on! That is the Doctor's daughter!
The Doctor's son is also playing a role this series, as David Troughton (Son of Patrick)marks his third(?) appearance in the show in episode 12; Midnight of which not much is known.

The Sontarans Are Back!

Last seen in the horrible, ultimately pointless multi-Doctor story (It's not an anniversary year! You can't go doing multi-Doctor stories willy-nilly!) The Two Doctors, the Sontarans return to take on the Doctor, Donna and a returning Martha (Hooray! You wont catch her whoring herself in some low rent rubbish on ITV2, just on some low rent rubbish on BBC2 instead. Just kidding Freema, I loved you in Torchwood.) Of course, their return is written by Helen Raynor who kinda fudged the Daleks last series, will she do the same to the Sontarans? I bloody hope not.

The Doctor meets Agatha Christie! And goes to Pompei!

Our celebrity historical this season takes place much later than usual, as the Doctor and Donna meet Agatha Christie in a Donald Cotton style comedy episode....hooray. Much less comical will be James Moran's The Fires of Pompei in which the Doctor and Donna travel back to the day of the eruption and have to decide whether or not to let them know of their impending fate. I'm running odds on Tennant saying the line "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." at 1/1.

Steven Moffat's writing a 2 parter!

The best writer on the show is writing a two part episode involving some sort of space library and no doubt monsters that will reduce the kiddies into shuddering wrecks. Expect him to be called the new Robert Holmes or the new showrunner at least once...unless, horror of horrors he drops the ball.

So there it is, a few things to get excited about this season, and seeing as you can't really get excited about Steven Moffats big face, or indeed Catherine Tate, and seeing as Torchwood's still on TV, here's a picture of Eve Myles to end with.

Any excuse really...

Touchwood

Doctor Who returns on the 5th April! Huzzah! More on that next week, but before the Doctor is reunited with Donna, Captain Jack has his hands full...or is that Ianto?

Yes Torchwood was back to its old tricks in Adrift a rather slower paced more emotional episode focusing on Gwens attempts to track down people who have gone missing in the rift. Some really good moments, Robert Pugh as the older version of a missing teenager was nothing short of brilliant, and Ruth "would I or wouldn't I?" Jones was great as his mother. The rest of the cast were pretty dire, and that handjob was unforgivable. Yes, for as Gwen walked in on Ianto and Jack getting off with each other, and Ianto pulled away his hand! Once again it's guilty of completely unneccesary "adult" moments, presumably to lighten the tone, but instead undermined what was a touching and emotional episode.

The Hand(Job) Of Fear

Thank god then for the next episode Fragments, a flashback heavy episode owing much to shows like Buffy, Primeval and, most obviously Lost. The team are caught in an explosion, caused by some sort of flashback bomb, seeing as it results in Jack, Tosh, Owen and Inaton remembering how they came to be employed by Torchwood. So we get Captain Jack in Victorian England with some mean sideburns, doing his best Angel impression, before flashing ahead to 1999 where some guy kills the whole of Jacks team for no real reason other than he wants to save them from whats coming. However we're still not sure what that is. Toshiko gets arrested by UNIT who really seem to have lost their sense of humour since 9/11 sticking people in red jumpsuits in some heavy handed Guantanamo allegory...well blatant signposted reference. Still no mention of her bumping into the 9th Doctor though! Then the weakest flashback being Jack and Ianto hunting down a pterodactyl in a gayed up Primeval rip-off. Owen gets the best one though, and Burn Gorman continues to cement himself as my favourite British actor, not bad for someone I hated around this time last year. Telling the story of a happy Owen preparing to get married to a woman with a problem with her brain, that problem being something that looked like a left-over Dalek mutant stuck to her brain. She dies, and we finally understand why Owen was such a terrible cunt last season. But who the hell left these bombs for our beloved Torchwood? Hang on...it's...no it can't be....it's Spike! So we get a massive showdown between Angel and Spike, sorry Captain Jack and Captain John on the 4th of April on BBC2. And rumour has it that not everyone's going to make it through the series finale alive.

"I'll get you Torchwood!" - Oh, wrong Spike...sorry

Pick 'n' Mix

No fixed topic this time, just a little look through the weeks events...

It's Smeato Time!

Oh, I appear to have posted a picture of the engineer John Smeaton, who, amongst other things, built the foundations for the London Bridge!

Anyway, why am I talking about Smeato? Well, he's been in the papers again (This is the baggage handler we're talking about now, though the money I'd pay to see a man in a powdered wig take on a terrorist....) the Mail have him linked to the incredible story of a nine year old boy who threw himself in the way of a knife wielding maniac who was attacking his mother. Smeato will be present when the boy picks up his award at the Sunday Mail Young Scot Awards. Apparently everyone's been calling young Nathan Thomas a "Little Smeato" that sounds to me like a bit of an insult. "Come here you little Smeato so I can boot your erse!"


John Smeaton has said that Nathan is something more than another Smeato. Damned right, this kid threw himself in front of his mother and got a knife in the face! Smeaton...well he kicked a man who was on fire. It's not as if he booted a suicide bomber out of a train. And apparently, according to reports he may not even have done that! Apparently "Eyewitnesses" are casting doubt on his involvement at Glasgow airport. Don't care either way, but I do think Smeaton playing William Wallace is just...well...crass?
You can see one "Scottish hero" playing the role of another here. Jesus.

"They may take our lives, but we'll just set aboot them"

In other news, young Shannon Matthews was found after being missing for 24 days holed up inside a bed. Good news, however the tabloids coverage couldn't resist the urge to link it to the McCanns. "Finding Shannon gives hope to the McCanns." Er...right, Shannon was missing for under a month, Madeline McCann's been missing for about 8 months now? And Shannon's parents clearly haven't killed her....did I just say that? I love the fact that because Matthews is from a working class background, the police and the papers are much quicker to jump on the dodgy background of the family.

And on the television, Gavin and Stacey return this week. Love this show, beautifully written characters, gentle but with little flashes of darkness and Rob Brydon doing what he does best. Can't wait.

Also this week, there's about 3 episodes of Torchwood. Wednesdays BBC2 episode From Out of The Rain is a ghost story written by PJ Hammond, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed it. It just seemed to pass me by, there was flashes of brilliance, the manner of the deaths was pretty cool, but it was just a little bit too supernatural. Julian Bleach was fantastic though, very promising if he is playing Davros in the upcoming new series of Doctor Who, here he is:

Speaking of Torchwood, I met John Barrowman this afternoon. Nice guy but the crowd at the book signing comprised of some of the best looking women and some of the worst. That's the world of Doctor Who for you.

And finally, if you're a fan of classic BBC comedy, then I think BBC4's Curse of Comedy season should be cracking. It starts on Wednesday with Jason Isaacs (Next Doctor or next Bond, either way I'm more than happy) playing Harry H Corbett of Steptoe and Son then continues with Ken Stott (When oh when will he be in Doctor Who?) as Tony Hancock, and David Walliams as Frankie Howard.

Hopefully the next time I type, we'll all know when Doctor Who is coming back.

Facebook, Listen and Learn

Remember the days before social networking websites? Those happy days when it was perfectly excusable to avoid those people you never really got on with at school because, hey, you're not gonna see them again are you? The days when people could pretty much do without sticking "is at a loose end." after their name. Or when people didn't try and evangelically enforce film quizzes and other such useless "apps" on you? Yeah, it was a simpler time really. But the Facebook generation is constantly becoming that bit more and more ridiculous.

Yay Facebook! ZOMG!

Very recently, two friends of mine split up with their girlfriends. All very sad, but the manner in which I found out was absolutely hilarious. 'I see [names removed] have split up.' 'Really? How, what happened?' 'I don't know but his relationship status on Facebook is now single and the other half thing on Bebo is gone.' Aaaah, of course. I think what made it more hilarious was the fact that we here in Aberdeen got a text from a friend in Glasgow asking what we knew about the break up because he had read about it on Facebook. Truly a wonderful age. So where does it end? It's interesting that people will now go on to a social networking site almost the moment their relationship breaks up, changing their status to single and putting a "is feeling crap" after their name in an effort to...well an effort to what? Inform their friends? Make the ex feel bad? God only knows, but where is it going to end? Are we soon going to get people changing their status on Facebook when they receive some terrible news? Mark Donaldson has been diagnosed with Lupus for example. Are we going to get to a stage that parents will use social networking when something bad happens? Mark Donaldson has been killed in a car accident, funeral takes place next Thursday? Growing up in the late 80s and 90s I expected 2008 to herald flying cars, cool robots or making contact with aliens, instead we seem to just have a quicker way to find out when the girl or boy we've been after has become single. God bless technology.

This week: Is Sport Relief so don't expect me to be bigging up any of Fridays TV, this week has also seen me be accused of having an affair, debating sex with Kirstie Allsopp, avoiding writing 6,000 words for courses I don't understand, and preparing to be disappointed by Romero's new movie. Mark has also been shocked by the decision to change Doctor Who's United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. What's the Brigadier gonna think?

The Difficult Second Album

Jerry Seinfeld dressed as Elvis, and "The Death of Rwanda" talk about mixed tones

If the rumours are to be believed; this man could very well be coming back to our screens with a new project at NBC. But how do you follow something as big as Seinfeld? Larry David managed it beautifully with the magnificent Curb Your Enthusiasm and it's that show that Jason Alexander and Julia Louis Dreyfuss have done their best work, neither being able to hit the comedy heights they reached with Seinfeld in their own sitcoms. So can Jerry manage it? I certainly hope so, I love the guy, I even risked being put on a register by turning up to see his kids film Bee Movie in the middle of the afternoon. So best of luck Seinfeld, don't let us down.

Two other big stars who have recently embarked on new projects are Peter Krause and Kelsey Grammer.

Krause was really the main star of the fantastic funeral director drama Six Feet Under (although he also plays Jim Carey's boss in The Truman Show!) and Dirty Sexy Money is really his first drama show since the beautiful season finale. and it's pretty good. Of course, from the opening scenes, I did worry that Krause is carving out a market in playing the man who doesn't want to be like his father but ends up doing his job. But Nick (his character in this.) is a lot more grounded than Nate Fisher, he is a happily married lawyer (Presumably setting up a dramatic fall from grace.) and does a lot of charity work but is seduced into working for the extremely rich family his father spent his life working for, covering up for them etc. The family themselves have a dark secret that we discover at the close of episode 1, forming the driving force of the series; one of them may just very well have killed Nick's dad. It's delightfully trashy, and hugely entertaining and has Donald Sutherland as the patriarch of the family, the scenes between him and Krause are excellent. Dirty Sexy Money hits Channel 4 quite soon, by which time I hope to have watched it all!

I bigged up Frasier last week, and rightfully so, and its star Kelsey Grammer is finally back on TV in Fox's new sitcom Back To You. Grammer plays Chuck Darling, a former local news anchor who has to return to the network that made him a star after a meltdown live on air. This sort of plot could be done in the non-laughter track, meta-tv style of The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm or Extras or any number of pretenders to the throne of Gervais and David. Thankfully, the script doesn't allow it, this is traditional live studio audience stuff and is actually very very funny. The supporting characters are all excellent, (especially the fantastic Fred
Willard as sports anchor.) and the running will they-wont they? plot between Chuck and co-anchor Kelly is actually engaging much like early Niles and Daphne. It's really refreshing to have a traditional sitcom back on our screens, which doesn't mind a laughter track (Something new BBC sitcom Empty is sorely lacking.) and equally refreshing to have one that's genuinely funny. I leave you with a picture of the legend that is Mr Fred Willard. See ya real soon, ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Spin City

I've been watching a lot of Frasier recently, on account of having a lot of work to avoid and having the Paramount Comedy Channel in my room. Now, Frasier is perhaps the single greatest example of a spin-off; a completely different sort of show from Cheers, and running for the same time, it is a show that you can enjoy without ever seeing the original show from which it was er...spun(?) A shame then, that the most recent examples of the spin-off haven't quite learned this lesson; The Green Green Grass relies mainly on the fact you're only watching it because you want to see characters from the perrenial classic Only Fools and Horses. I can't think of one person who would watch it for any other reason. The CSI franchise depends more on the fact that people want to see the same grisly murders and forensic investigation in a variety of different locations, fair enough I suppose.

A desire to see favourite characters and the 'same thing, different place' are the problems that Life on Mars 'sequel', spin-off, Ashes to Ashes certainly suffers from.Say what you like about it's ending, but Life on Mars was a fresh, original take on the cop show. It gave us Gene Hunt, and a Camberwick Green episode about a nonce bashing. Then, unlike most shows these days, it knew when to wrap things up and answer our questions. Only it didn't, fair enough we knew that all of it took place in Sam's head, but they didn't let it lie. The BBC demanded more Gene Genie; and after a presumably short tone meeting they went: "Gene Hunt in the 80s?" and lo, we have Ashes to Ashes. Now, shows like 24 and Lost have annoyed me in the past, but I stick with them because I want to find out what the hell is going on. I have no such compulsion with Ashes, don't get me wrong, I fancy Keeley Hawes and I love Gene Hunt, but that isn't enough is it? We know exactly what's happened, she's in a coma and has taken Sam's characters into her consciousness...and Alex Drake doesn't let us forget it, constantly referring to everyone as constructs. If she knows what's going on, and we know what's going on, then where the hell is the entertainment? Oh, right, shallow "I Heart 1980's" style references to pop culture. According to Matthew Graham, there are answers about Gene Hunt, but surely the whole 'I read Sam's report and have taken those characters into my consciousness.' is answer enough?

"He came and went" F-nar F-nar

Remember this? Ah those heady early days of "Adult" spin-off Torchwood with it's "Nymphomaniacs from Space!" plotlines and casual but really forced use of the F-word. It's got better this year, but it's still not without its problems. Consistancy is certainly one of them, we only seem to be getting about 2 episodes in a row that are actually any cop. And I am starting to like and care about the characters, especially after this weeks Owen-centric episode, so I would probably watch it if it wasn't a spin-off from my beloved Doctor Who.

So what have we learned? That the spin-off relies on the familiarity with an aspect of it as a hook, but should really present you with something a bit different at the same time. This is of course hardly fresh and new insight, but the fact that Cleveland from Family Guy is said to be getting his own show, suggests that maybe TV Land needs a refresher course in spin-offs.